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July 2003 Linux Journal

The July issue of Linux
Journal is on newsstands now.
This issue focuses on Hardware. Click
here
to view the table of contents, or
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Legislation and More Legislation

Patents

It looks like the flawed system of software patenting that has become
entrenched in the United States is on its way to Europe, amidst clarion
calls of "harmonise!" and "encourage innovation!". Not
everybody is so keen. Richard Stallman and Nick Hill have written a brief
but thorough
critique of the plans, published in The Guardian. Ultimately,
each side claims that the introduction of software patents will have
opposite effects. Will they encourage innovation or stifle it? Will
software development thrive in a more certain environment, or become bogged
down in a morass of litigation? Ultimately you have to look at the
evidence and make your own mind up. It is this columnist's opinion, however,
that if you look at people like Richard Stallman, and then look at the
people supporting increased patents and asks "who seems to support genuine
innovation?" you will get some way towards the answer.

Arlene McCarthy, a British MEP who has played an important role in the
development of software patenting plans, certainly knows where she stands.
She also knows what those of us who advocate free software
should do...

It is time some of the "computer rights campaigners" got real... We
have an obligation to legislate not just for one section of the
software industry who seeks to impose its business model on the rest of
industry, which moreover is not "free", but is actually a different
form of monopoly by imposing a copyright licence system on users.

To be honest, this smacks of the "TINA" doctrine (There Is No Alternative)
promulgated by Margaret Thatcher & Co. during the 1980's.
McCarthy does not even appear to appreciate the irony that the pro-patent
lobby seeks to impose a business model on the rest of industry: a business
model based on government-backed artificial monopolies.
The Register has
criticised those that rail against people like Arlene McCarthy as being
ineffective, and ultimately self indulgent. Although
the criticisms have some validity, they are ultimately cheap and
convenient rather than insightful, and are not necessarily
a true measure
of the reality of opposition.
Perhaps a truer indication of the reality being faced in Europe, and maybe
especially in the UK, is the British Government's handling of the public
consultation with regard to ID cards. In an effort to maintain a result
which could be used to provide positive spin and reduce debate, thousands of
submissions made by members of the public via
the STAND.org.uk website
have been amalgamated into a single vote. Clearly the UK Government is not
keen to have the terms of engagement defined by the public, no matter how
flattering we are. The interests that are defining the terms of
engagement are perhaps illustrated by proposals to include biometric data
on European passports.

Nonetheless, there is still work that can be done. Even though
The European Parliament's Committee for Legal Affairs and the Internal
Market (JURI)
has voted
on a final list of proposed amendments to the planned software patent
directive, the proposals still have to pass the European Parliament.
Following attempts to rush the directive through the Parliament stage it
has been
rescheduled to its original date, September 1st 2003. This allows some
time for concerned parties to lobby their MEPs, though with upcoming
holidays,
there is not as much time as one might think.

EULA

Infoworld reports
that the US Supreme Court has refused to hear a reverse-engineering case,
thus allowing a lower court ruling to stand. The lower court ruling was
against a company that had imitated a product's look and feel (as opposed
to recreating similar code) in violation of the product's EULA. The case
is significant because it's outside the UCITA states (Virginia and
Maryland, which expressly make EULAs enforceable), where EULAs are of
questionable legal value. But now more valuable, apparently. The court
also apparently accepted the plaintiff's contention that the defendant
"must have" examined more than just the user interface, with no direct
evidence. This case goes back several years, with previous suits between
the companies.
(Analysis by Mike 'Iron' Orr)

SCO

There is little point in going through the details of the SCO case once
again. Instead, you can peruse the
sco.iwethey.org collection of documents
relating to lawsuit.
If you want further reading,
Eric Raymond has released an updated version of his
SCO vs. IBM position paper which reflects some of the changes in the
case over the past weeks. Hopefully the doubt surrounding this whole
affair will be dispelled soon. As Richard Stallman
has commented,
the media bears some blame for the depth of the FUD generated by this case.

The Brazilian Public Sector to Choose Free Software
It has been reported that the Brazilian public sector
plans to migrate from Windows to Linux
on 80% of computers in state institutions and state-owned businesses.

SSC, publisher of Linux Journal, recently announced the launch of a
new on-line publication,
WorldWatch.
It offers readers a
comprehensive daily digest of articles from publications around the
world about topics concerning Linux and open-source software.

News in General

SGI Announces first Altix Customers on Madison

SGI
has announced the first of its customers receiving the new Intel Itanium 2
'Madison'
processor in recent sales of the SGI Altix 3000 system.
The Altix system combines SGI's fourth generation NUMAflex shared memory
architecture with Intel Itanium 2 processors and the 64-bit Linux operating
system for a uniquely balanced system. Each supercluster node runs a
single Linux operating system image with up to 64 Itanium 2 processors and
512GB of memory. With the new processor immediately available on Altix
systems. Among the first SGI customers to deploy Altix 3000 systems based
on the new processors are:

SGI has been doing very well in terms of
performance benchmarks
with systems based on the new Itanium 2 processor.
The entry-level server starts at $70,176 (U.S. list) at four processors
with up to 32GB of memory and scales to 12 processors and 96GB of memory.

Knoppix

Quantian Scientific Computing Environment.
Dirk Eddelb&yyml;ttel
announced
Quantian, a remastered version of
Knoppix.
Quantian
differs from Knoppix by adding a set of programs of
interest to applied or theoretical workers in quantitative or
data-driven fields. It still retains all of Knoppix' impressive
features in terms of automatic configuration of virtually all
available hardware features. If there is sufficient interest, this
project may become a Debian subproject.
(Courtesy Debian
Weekly News)

Slashdot report
on the new bootable arcade emulator (MAME) with hardware detection from
Knoppix.

VariCAD

VariCAD
has announced the recent release of its mechanical CAD system -
VariCAD 9.0.1.0. The compact CAD package includes many tools for 3D
modeling and 2D drafting, libraries of mechanical parts, surface development
(unbending), calculations of standard mechanical components, tools for working
with bills of materials (BOM) and title blocks. It is a compact system
featuring all necessary tools that the mechanical engineering designers need to
make their work comfortable and effective. The system is distributed
"fully-loaded", with all features included. Free 30-day trial version is
available for download from
http://www.varicad.com

Linux Distro Distribution in Ireland

JMC SOFTWARE has announced that it has been appointed Irish
distributer for FreeBSD as well as the Linux distributions from Red Hat,
SuSE and Mandrake.
These are available throughout Ireland
at www.thelinuxmall.com
or tel 01 6291282.

Big Medium

Big Medium
is claimed to be an easy-to-use tool for Linux and other UNIX systems that
allows non-technical staff to edit and maintain websites while providing
a wide range of features.
The software is a suite of Perl scripts designed for web servers running
the UNIX operating system, including Linux, Mac OSX, Solaris and FreeBSD.
Big Medium is licensed for $129, and a free
online demo is available.

Zend Performance Suite released/PHP scripting

Zend Technologies, the designers of the PHP scripting engine,
has announced the release of the Zend Performance Suite (ZPS) 3.5.
Zend Performance Suite enables both enterprises and service providers
to overcome scalability issues and to deliver high performance
Web sites, increasing server throughput by up to 30 times - without
upgrading their hardware.

Zend has also announced that it will team with Sun Microsystems to initiate
specification for PHP and web scripting access to Java technology.

QuickUML 1.1

Excel Software
has begun shipping
QuickUML 1.1 for Windows and Linux. QuickUML is an object-oriented
design tool that provides tight integration and synchronization of a
core set of UML models.
QuickUML Linux 1.1 adds improved font handling, an enhanced Contents
view for class and object models, and a toolbar to access code
manager commands. QuickUML Linux has the same features as the Windows
edition and also uses QuickHelp to provide context sensitive
application help.

Excel Software has also announced the
availability of QuickHelp for Linux. QuickHelp is a development tool
for creating and deploying application help to Mac OS 9, Mac OS X,
Windows 95 through XP and virtually all Linux distributions.